Comments by "GH1618" (@GH-oi2jf) on "Spark" channel.

  1. At 19:00 they say that after the Challenger disaster, the shuttles had the means for crew to eject. That is not true. Ejection seats were present only for the early test flights, when there was a crew of two. No shuttles had ejection seats after they began normal operation.
    10
  2. The Lunar Rovers needed only one Hp and their range was about 50 miles. That is a much easier requirement than a practical EV on Earth has.
    4
  3. Hard Wired — This post exhibits considerable ignorance of American history and politics. The United States was not of one mind about the war prior to Pearl Harbor. Only a few Americans were ever Nazi sympathizers, but many were isolationist. President Roosevelt supported Britain from the beginning of the conflict, but did not have a free hand to put the United States into the war. After Pearl Harbor the United States was fully committed to the war effort in both Europe and the Pacific, but was unprepared. There is too much fiction in it to waste my time refuting all of it.
    3
  4. O’Hair’s suit failed, and rightly so. NASA did not tell the astronauts what to say or read. They were exercising their own First Amendment rights.
    2
  5. The statement by Prof. Galambos is odd, because other structural engineers have said they knew the World Trade Center would collapse. Steel loses its strength when heated sufficiently. The I-35W bridge was just underdesigned, particularly the gusset plates.
    2
  6. Hard Wired — You must be a Labour Party Marxist.
    2
  7. The Earth is 3 2/3 times larger (diameter). You cannot make a judgment about the size merely by looking at a photograph. The apparent size depends on focal lengrh and perspective.
    2
  8. No, von Braun did not invent the liquid-fuelled rocket. Hermann Oberth, von Braun's mentor, built liquid-fuelled rockets. Von Braun learned rocketry from him.
    2
  9. Hard Wired — The United States was assisting Britain before Pearl Harbor, but tentatively. Pearl Harbor put the civilian population of the United States into the war. The declaration of war by Germany on the United States, shortly after Pearl Harbor, gave the U. S. government a free hand to concentrate on Europe as needed.
    2
  10. Tommy lawton — To clarify, the term “black box” means that the internal design of the box is unknown (to people who have no need to know). The interface to the aircraft is specified and the function is specified, but the implementation of the function may take any form.
    2
  11. They didn’t “revamp” it. They built a new, second set of locks.
    2
  12. He means that there was no public opposition.
    2
  13. Rob M — The Me 262 came so late it was not a significant factor in the war.
    2
  14. The interesting question is why structures fail. The I35W bridge failure in Minneapolis wasn’t a consequence of lack of knowledge, because steel truss bridges have been built for a long time. It was just underengineered. It came down, as it often does, to an inadequate margin of safety. Doing things on the cheap.
    2
  15. John Chatterton — And to save metal.
    1
  16. Cheeseatingjunglista — Design changes have been made to all flying 737s since this crash.
    1
  17. Free exercise of religion is a fundamental value of our republic. I guess you didn't get the memo.
    1
  18. You don't want to point your camera at the sun, unless you have a special one for solar observation.
    1
  19. The astronauts themselves chose to read from Genesis, not NASA. It was their right to say what they chose. They had no duty, in my opinion, to say something that everyone in the whole world would approve of.
    1
  20. In our system, religion is a personal choice. It is too bad some of us don't accept that core value.
    1
  21. They never left Earth's gravity.
    1
  22. rdvgrd6 — What would you add?
    1
  23. Hard Wired — Self-reliance and preparedness in defense.
    1
  24. Robert J. Simpson — Wrong. Most people want governments to regulate air raft design and operation to increase safety. Flying is much safer today than it was 50 years ago, largely because of mandated safety improvements.
    1
  25. Einstein did not invent the atomic bomb. No one person did. It took the ideas and efforts of many people to build the first one.
    1
  26. “Multiverse” is not part of the Copenhagen interpretation.
    1
  27. Why would a pilot do such a stupid stunt as that?
    1
  28. Dave Zombie — I believe it. I don’t think it is hard to believe at all.
    1
  29. It was their idea to do it. NASA management didn't know about it.
    1
  30. pete5668 — Bad idea. For thousands of flights a day that would be a vast amount of data, nearly all of which would be of no interest whatsoever. It would be a much more expensive system and would be less reliable than the system we have today, because of radio interference. It is extremely rare that the recorders are not recovered. An improvement that could be made practically would be to transmit aircraft position and velocity at periodic intervals to satellites to make it easier to locate aircraft that go down in water. This would be usable even if there were occasional dropouts.
    1
  31. sputnic — The 737 NG has an excellent safety record compared to earlier generations. Most crashes are not caused by defects in the aircraft.
    1
  32. NASA made it to the Moon with a year to spare. The last year of the decade was 1970, not 1969. No one person deserves the credit for "winning" the space race. A few hundred thousand people worked on the project, and many thousands of those had key roles.
    1
  33. He improved it and made a practical lamp.
    1
  34. Bad Pharma — There is no oversight. Storing of data in the flight recorders is the right way to do it. The main improvement needed is tracking of aircraft position by satellite so that a crash site can be more easily determined when an aircraft goes down in water.
    1